Thursday 27 Feb 2014

We enjoyed Granada and the campsite was ideally placed, but at this time of year it's quite cool and so we departed to try and find some warmth.

The weather forecast showed it being a lot warmer at the coast and to the west, so we returned to our plan of heading for Portugal. Last year we spent an enjoyable couple of weeks at El Puerto de Santa Maria, just across the bay from Cadiz and as we fancied a return trip to the city, we set the navigation systems for there.

Round the Granada "rondo", we headed out along an auto-via, and later onto a good ordinary road, once again passing through varying landscapes from industrial, through intensive agriculture then into the mountains again - Scotland will never seem the same.

Here are a few more of the photos taken along the route:

The airport's over there somewhere!

Mountain village

Mountain!

A convent, we think

Olvera, a typical "white town" with church on the hill

General view descending towards Cadiz

We stopped for lunch outside a motor racing track (Jerez?), not being able to find the sign-posted services off the auto-via, before the final few miles around Jerez de la Frontera, which is a large centre for the sherry industry. El Puerto de Santa Maria was once the main port for sherry and still has connections. More roundabout art demonstrates.

Sherry barrels at El Puerto de Santa Maria

Stopped off at a Carrefour hypermarket, situated within a Metrocentre type retail complex, to stock up - we plan to stay a week. Then the satnav took us unerringly to Las Dunas campsite, where we stayed last year. It's so easy going back as they have all the records on computer and check-in takes but a few moments.

We were told that the site was busy as it was the start of Carnival this weekend, so we'll have something new to see. Directed to a nice sunny spot (we'll have to see about those flies!) the kettle was soon on and we settled down to some chill-out time.

Wednesday 26 Feb 2014

Another cold night and not a particularly early start, given yesterdays perambulations! But after cleaning up and servicing the van we decided to go back into Granada to try the city tour bus and also shopping for one or two bits and pieces.

Once again the local bus arrived on time (they're every 15mins) and deposited us in the city centre. We had got a leaflet yesterday so knew where to go, and managed to have a look into Cortes D'Ingles, a large chain department store, very like Debenhams in the UK. They didn't have what we were looking for however so continued to the tour bus stop. We purchased tickets from the nice lady who told us the bus would be 15-20mins. That's Spanish mins! Still we were quite comfortable sitting in the warm sunshine so no matter.

When the bus arrived we piled on - to find we were the only passengers! Never mind, once we'd sorted the commentary we settled down to enjoy the tour. Suffice it to say that it was not as good as others we've been on and would hesitate to recommend it, unless you were visiting the Alhambra when it would be a good way of incorporating the visit - the tickets are valid for 48 hours. Nonetheless we took a number of photos:

Roundabout Art - an old sugarbeet press

Arabian-influenced villas are quite common

Wide streets

More roundabout art

Modern street-lamps!

Despite being wrapped up, it wasn't very warm on the top of the bus and we weren't sorry when we got off at the Cathedral. Despite an excellent view from the top of the Alhambra (see yesterdays photos) close up it was difficult to get a good general view:

Cathedral side door

Front door?

Not having had any lunch we wandered around the back streets and came to the Plaza Bib-Rambla, which had a small selection of cafes and restaurants. We chose one for a pizza, to discover we got a 10% discount by producing our tour bus tickets! Se we had another cup of coffee!

Cathedral peeking over the building tops

Plaza Bib-Rambla

Suitably refreshed we wandered on generally back towards the bus stop. We discovered that the Tourist Office had provided us with a map showing a number of walks around the city and we concluded that walking would be a much better way of seeing the city than the tour bus. But not all at once!

Town Hall

Columbus presenting his plans to Queen Isabel

We made our way back to the bus stop, stopping to buy a data sim card for our internet connection, and concluded that we liked Granada and will return. Of course at this time of year it is not crowded, which is how we like it, but in the summer it would no doubt be quite different.

Tuesday 25 Feb 2014

It gets quite cold here at night, but we suppose being at over 2500ft at the base of the Sierra Nevada has something to do with it!

Today we became tourists. One of the sights Granada is famous for is the Alhambra, a 13th century palace constructed when the area was a Muslim enclave. In fact it is a series of palaces and gardens that were constructed for the various kings and the complex is now a World Heritage Site. Indeed they are in remarkably good condition, although there is of course an ongoing restoration programme. But, apart from a complete lack of furnishings - they're all in the museums of which there are plenty around the city - it is quite easy to see the lavish way of life enjoyed by the ruling classes of the day.

We travelled into the city by local bus from right outside the campsite and were advised to connect with the no. 13 bus to the Alhambra, which we couldn't find. But it didn't look far on the map so we "strolled" to Plaza Nuevo along the main shopping street and then up the hill to the Alhambra. Big mistake and we later learned we could have taken a minibus, but it was not clear that the no. 30, destination The Cathedral, was the one to take. We regretted it later.

We had been told you needed to book your ticket in advance and indeed most touristy places can do this for you. This is because they only let a certain number of people at a time into the main palaces, however the campsite manager said it wasn't really necessary at this time of year. In the end we queued for 25mins for tickets and got a timed entry which allowed us plenty of time to see the rest. Suspect "in season" it would be quite different and pre-booking would be essential.

But the views were fantastic; once again we took over 100 photos and here are just a few. First off, some of the views from the top:

Looking out over the city

The Cathedral

Palacios Nazaries from Generalife

Towards the mountains to the west

Some of the internal photographs in no particular order - we'll try and identify them where we can:

Decorated pathways

Palacio del Panal

Ceramic decoration

Sala de Abencerrages

Patio de Arrayanes

Ceiling decoration

Intricate wall decoration perfectly preserved everywhere

Patio de Los Leones

An internal garden

Another internal garden

A water basin - bath?

Los Leones

And then finally some of the external views:

Santa Maria de La Alhambra

Alcazabar - Military Fort

Palacio de Carlos V - now a museum

The forested hillside

There are very few places to get anything to eat or drink, though we did find some rather expensive sandwiches in one of the gift shops. Advice - take your own. So of course by mid-afternoon we were both somewhat fatigued! And still we walked back down and through the town to the bus stop!

We didn't see absolutely everything as there are many steep steps to negotiate and we were simply not up to it - our mistake was not taking the bus up the hill. But we would come back again.

Sorry the photos are a bit higgledy piggeldy - re-sizing mixed landscape and portrait views seems to be a bit hit and miss. I'll get the hang of it eventually!

Monday 24 Feb 2014

The forecast looked a bit iffy so we decided that it was time to move on. We missed out Granada on the way down but as it is on the way to Portugal we decided to head that way.

And of course it started to rain; still we'd rather it rained while we were travelling, although it only amounted to the odd shower. Initially, to avoid heading in the wrong direction, just to join the motorway, we went cross-country, enjoying the real, no holidaymakers Spain. Agriculture is very intensive, every available space being used, even the slopes of the mountains are terraced. We eventually rejoined the motorway at Murcia, a large modern city.

Castillo de Monteagudo

Murcia

Roundabout Art, Murcia

And more

Very modern city is Murcia

 Leaving Murcia, the motorway started to climb into the mountains, once again giving us some cracking views.

Towards the Sierras

Another Castillo

Colourful hotel

 At one point we pulled off the motorway looking for somewhere to stop for lunch. We followed some signs and encountered

more roundabout art!

Back on the road and the road climbed even more, with more superb views. Lots of photos taken but here are a couple of the best.

But ahead of us we could see the high mountains covered in cloud and beyond it was decidedly grey. You can clearly see the snow line, which we were approaching rapidly.

As we passed 4000ft going up it got darker, started to rain and then -

It snowed

Welcome to sunny Spain!

For a while conditions got a bit iffy and the snow ploughs were out. But eventually the road started descending towards Granada, the snow turned to rain and then petered out.

We had identified a camp-site in the ACSI scheme quite close to the centre of Granada and for once the satnav, netbook and ACSI book all agreed that the best way was go round the top of Granada and turn back on ourselves! However we easily found Camping Reina Isabel, a small compact site and quickly booked in for 3 nights so that we could visit the Alhambra. Obviously this was the main purpose of visitors to this camp-site and we were given plenty of useful information.

So a quick check of the weather forecast promises that tomorrow should be dry so we'll try to be up early!